Conventional golf bags, which are designed for carrying golf clubs, and associated equipment such as shoes, balls, rain gear, towels, etc., are usually fabricated from a material which, while being somewhat flexible, nonetheless possesses substantial rigidity and is relatively heavy and cumbersome. The rigidity is required to provide protection to the items carried therein and to permit the golf bag to remain standing vertically upright when placed on its bottom (or base). Unfortunately, the weight and cumbersomeness of such bags make them difficult to carry over the entire length of a golf course.
In order to alleviate the disadvantages of the fullweight bag, and the need to have a second lighter carrying bag, it has been proposed to utilize instead a lightweight bag fabricated from a lightweight material such as canvas. Such bags are commonly referred to as "Sunday bags". Unfortunately, such material affords little protection to items carried therein, thereby necessitating transferring the contents of the Sunday bag to a fullweight bag during transportation to and from the golf course. Also, such material does not have sufficient rigidity to stand vertically upright when placed on its base. Since this is the position which many bags are stored, it once again necessitates the transference of the contents of the "Sunday bag" to a fullweight bag before the storing thereof. Finally, such "Sunday bags" presented the problem of where they themselves could be stored when not in use. Despite being lightweight, such "Sunday bags" can be relatively bulky requiring a quite large storage space. Since such "Sunday bags" do not have sufficient rigidity, they could not simply be placed in a fullweight bag, for if positioned therein, they tend to collapse and fall to the bottom of the bag, thereby once again necessitating removal of all of the contents from the bag when the next use thereof is desired.
There have been attempts, of which I am aware, to modify both the fullweight bags and the lightweight "Sunday bag", so as to alleviate the above disadvantages. In the U.S. Pat. No. 4,657,135 issued to Kjose a different type of fullweight bag is provided. In Kjose the storage space for the associated equipment is removed from the remainder of the bag, so that the remainder of the bag could be streamlined. The storage space was then built into an equipment carrying case, which can also receive and carry the golf bag therein. While streamlining and lightening, somewhat, the weight of the traditional fullweight bag, the golf bag of Kjose nonetheless are taught to be fabricated from a rigid or semi-rigid material, such as plastic, so as to provide a greater amount of protection to the golf clubs carried within the bag when the bag is transported or shipped. Indeed like traditional bags the lightest material taught by Kjose is a "cloth-like materials along with leather or leather-like material", and Kjose specifically rules out forming this bag from cloth-like material alone. Thus, while due to the streamlining the bag of Kjose is lighter than the traditional fullweight bag, it is nonetheless still substantially heavy and cumbersome to carry.
In U.S. Pat. No. 2,665,727 issued to Fite, a different type of "Sunday bag" is provided that is fabricated from wicker. While this wicker bag does provide both more protection to the clubs during shipment than the ordinary canvas bag and more rigidity in order to stand vertically upright when placed on its base, it is nonetheless easily damaged. Also these bags are significantly more expensive to fabricate than ordinary canvas.
Thus, it can be seen that there remains a need to provide a golf bag which is substantially rigid, so as to provide protection to golf clubs and associated equipment disposed therein during transportation, which can stand vertically upright when placed on its bottom for, i.e. storing, and nonetheless, which has a lightweight Sunday bag fabricated from a relatively non rigid material such as canvas that may be selectively utilized apart therefrom, or in conjunction therewith, without the necessity of either transferring or removing the contents of the Sunday bag therefrom.